Minnesota Twins left fielder Jason Kubel (13) looses a fly ball in the sun, allowing the Kansas City Royals’ Alex Gordon to reach second in the second inning at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Saturday, April 19, 2014. The Royals defeated the Twins, 5-4. (John Sleezer/Kansas City Star/MCT)

Saturday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium, the Twins experienced the flip side of generosity in a 5-4 loss to the Kansas City Royals.

“Baseball’s a weird game,” cleanup hitter Chris Colabello said. “We had an inning the other day (against Toronto) where we walked eight times and scored six runs. Today, it was one inning. One inning made the difference in the game.”

On this day, that was the inexplicable fourth.

Twins starter Kevin Correia (0-2) was cruising with a 2-0 lead until a five-run Royals uprising that was aided by multiple defensive miscues.

Colabello, making just his 17th career start in right field, misplayed a Billy Butler liner into a double. That followed Alex Gordon’s ground single up the middle to open the fourth.

“I took a drop step in the wrong direction and got twisted around,” Colabello said of the Butler play. “Obviously, it carried over my head. Not too many people feel worse than I do about it.”

After the Royals tied the score on Mike Moustakas’ sacrifice fly and Justin Maxwell’s single, Correia hit Alcides Escobar with an 0-2 pitch.

That brought up Nori Aoki, who slapped a soft liner past third baseman Trevor Plouffe for the go-ahead single. Plouffe never moved, having lost the ball in the white shirts in the stands.

“He uses a white bat; that’s what really got me,” Plouffe said. “I didn’t see that ball at all. I saw that he swung and that he hit it and I saw him look my way. Then I heard the ball go by me.”

Plouffe, who has played many day games in Kansas City, wasn’t wearing sunglasses at the time. He made the adjustment after the fourth, but by then it was too late.

“It’s just something that is frustrating,” Plouffe said. “That was during that five-run inning. We need to cut down those runs.”

Rookie catcher Josmil Pinto added another mistake, throwing the ball into left field when Escobar led a double steal. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said that ball never should have been thrown.

“That’s a game we definitely should have won,” Gardenhire said. “If we make the plays we’re supposed to make, we win that ballgame.”

Correia gave up five hits and hit a batter in the inning. He allowed nine hits overall in six innings, walking two and striking out two, but was unable to provide the sixth quality start for the Twins (8-9).

“We’re a starting pitching staff that pitches to contact,” Correia said. “We don’t have a guy on this team that’s going to strike out 200 guys in a season. We pride ourselves on making plays. We’ve done that in the past.”

Just not on Saturday.

“These guys are going to turn around,” Correia said, “and come back and play some good defense.”

Left fielder Jason Kubel lost Gordon’s pop-fly double in the sun leading off the second, but Correia was able to pitch around that.

In the fifth, a warning-track collision between Colabello and center fielder Aaron Hicks nearly knocked a Moustakas fly ball out of Hicks’ glove. Hicks leaped over Colabello and whacked his hand on the electronic scoreboard at the base of the wall.

“I heard him yell, ‘I got it,’ as he was jumping up in the air to catch it,” Colabello said of Hicks. “He made a great play. It felt like he caught an alley-oop and dunked on me. I got posterized, I guess.”

Kurt Suzuki, serving as the designated hitter for the first time since 2011, led the Twins’ offense. Suzuki hit a one-out homer in the fourth, his first since going deep off then-Twins righty Liam Hendriks in Oakland last Sept. 21.

An inning later, Suzuki added a two-run, two-out single to pull the Twins within a run, but that was as close as they would get. Suzuki improved to .438 for his career against Royals starter Bruce Chen.

Hicks brought home the other Twins run with a bases-loaded walk in the second.

After knocking out Chen, the Twins went hitless over the final four innings. Following Pedro Florimon’s leadoff walk in the sixth, the final 12 Twins batters were set down by the hard-throwing trio of Danny Duffy, Wade Davis and closer Greg Holland.

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